


Salt in the Wound

by elmstreetkid



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games)
Genre: Abuse of Authority, Blood Magic, Gen, Murder, Templars (Dragon Age)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-11
Updated: 2015-10-11
Packaged: 2018-04-25 20:19:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4975150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elmstreetkid/pseuds/elmstreetkid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>the Champion of Kirkwall is also the city's most prolific serial killer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Salt in the Wound

There's a killer who stalks the streets of Kirkwall at night. 

Templars, they always target Templars. They'll be found, barely in one piece, stripped naked with cuts all over and blood pooled around them. The Guardsmen look into it, the Order does too, and besides sets of Templar plate and swords found being hawked alongside a smuggler's shady merchandise, they never have a lead. The investigations die down with the Qunari attacks, but now Kirkwall has a Champion, and the Templars look to her as someone who might bring justice to their fallen comrades. 

The Champion of Kirkwall is a mage. The signs are there but no one puts the pieces together, too busy in awe of a beautiful woman walking down the streets of Hightown in finery with her fingers laced between those of her Dalish lover. They don't sense the magic pulsing under skin, they just see the Ferelden-born Marcher with an Antivan complexion and an Ander name and that's enough to keep the nobles gossiping so much they don't look past it. Unless you fought along side her, and few have, you wouldn't know that she was a mage, much less a maleficar. The only person who knows what she truly does after dark is her sweetheart, as birds of a feather flock together. The other people who take up arms with her either consider her such a good friend that they can look past it, because they believe she only uses her own blood, or they're the dwarf or the Rivaini and indifferent to it. She's not lying to them, and she would tell them what she does if they asked, but they don't ask. 

She's going after another target tonight. She does enough business in the Gallows to know which Templars to pick and why. Alain, a mage she met years before, told her of one named Ser Alrik, who makes Harrowed mages Tranquil for his own enjoyment, and she's been picking off his underlings before she goes for him. She dresses in rags and a hood over her head, easily disposed of, and sets out for Lowtown. When she sees him, an ugly man with a boyish face hidden under stubble with two daggers on his back, she feigns distress and moves in. 

"Ser! Oh, ser! Good ser Templar, I need your help!" 

Her dress is shapeless, but when he turns to her his eyes immediately go to glance at her bust before looking her in the eye. 

"What's all this then?" 

"Oh, ser Templar, please!" she mimics being faint, swoons a bit to drive it home. "I just saw a man with blood on his hands and a staff on his back! I think he was an apostate! A blood mage! I saw him run into a building, please hurry!" 

He tries to compose himself, look mighty and noble for her. "Show me where, miss. I'll get this sorted out, don't you worry your pretty head none."

She takes his hand and leads him to an abandoned foundry and when she sees he's still trying to play the knight she knows she's got him hooked like a fish. He doesn't hesitate to step foot in the foundry, patrolling the main room, and it's so dark he can't see the glyphs she's laid at the other end.

"I'm not seein' anything, love. You sure he came this way? Don't look like nobody's been in here for awhile. You sure you just didn't want to get me alone?" he snickers at his own joke, turning around to gaze at her lecherously, inches away from her traps. 

"Oh, I did. I wanted you all to myself." 

He reaches to unbuckle his chestplate, smirking to himself at what he assumes is _his_ victory. "Alright, love. You want a real man, don'tcha? I can spare a little time for y-oohf!" She reaches out to his now unarmored chest and pushes him, hard. He falls backwards onto the floor, right onto her glyphs and he's paralyzed. He's straining his eyes looking up at her, alarmed and desperately trying to keep control over the situation. 

"Wh... what're you doing? What is this?" She's kneeling down, drawing a knife from the pouch on her belt and the color drains from his face. 

"It's magic. What does it look like?" 

"A... are you with him? The maleficar you said came in here?" 

She laughs, cutting away at the leather straps holding his cuisses and grieves in place. "I _am_ the maleficar." 

He's spitting, cursing at her, trying to writhe against the magic holding him in place. "You wretch!" He hisses, "you worthless fucking robe! I'll see you put to death for this!" 

He's down to his underclothes, veins in his skin throbbing in anger. "Will you now?" she jeers, holding up an index finger sizzling and hot with magic on the tip. "You won't make me Tranquil, _love_?" She traces her finger on his forehead, branding it with a crude sunburst and he howls in pain. She sits back on her haunches and admires her handiwork. "You look prettier like this, I'm sure you'd agree. Shame I don't have a mirror on me." 

"Please. Please don't do this. I'll, I'll not report this! I'll leave the Order and I won't lay eyes on another robe again, I swear on Andraste's pyre!" He's sobbing, panicked and pleading and she knows the promises are all empty. He wails when she traces the tip of the knife along his skin. 

"This is what you get for the way you treat mages. The way you hurt them, use them for your own gain, deny them as people and look at them instead as things. I won't make quick work of you, just like I didn't with your brothers and sisters who do the things you do. Just like I'll do with Ser Alrik, the Knight-Captain, all the way to the fucking Knight-Commander. And just like the ones before you, and the ones after you, I'll use your blood for magic. You're dying for the thing you hate the most." 

"Stop! Let me go! You're mad!"

She finds a spot to start cutting, angles the edge of the knife against the tender flesh and looks him in the eye, calm in the moment when she knows she's rubbed salt in the wound, made him truly afraid like he's done to countless mages before. "I am mad. You all made me mad." And she can feel her mana surging when the blade breaches skin. 

When all is said and done, her blood-splattered skirts rung out into a vial and thrown away, she leaves the body in the foundry, to be found later on when the Templars realize he's missing and search his last patrol top to bottom. She tucks the vial in her purse, and heads back to Hightown just as the sun begins to rise. Templar blood is rich with Lyrium, and she thinks she'll put a ribbon on the cork and give it to Merrill as a gift, to be poured in thick rivulets onto the glass of her Eluvian and put to better purpose. Until they learn better, they'll all be put to better purpose. 


End file.
